"The message of the movie: There is no "answer" to life. People will never be happy. There is no God. Everyone is lonely inside and everyone is ugly…as a result, they do things that hurt each other. Society sucks, but being a loner sucks even worse. I mean, I've been a happy existentialist…yea, I realize that humans are all fucked up inside, that people are never going to know the meaning of life, that there might not be a god…but that's always been freeing for me. "Hey, who the fuck knows, life's a party" kind of thing. But fuck, seeing this movie just hit me where it hurts."

Ouch?

The movie took in $32.5 million over the weekend, but will they be able to sustain it with that kind of toxic word of mouth?

Christine Spines at Entertainment Weekly had a much different experience. Despite the early reports that the movie matched the description of our former viewer, Spines decided to subject her children to the movie as her "own scientific study." It turned out her kids lapped up the Spike Jonze adaption of Maurice Sendak's short story, of which the original text is comprised of just ten sentences. The younger child, five-year old Huck, was enraptured from start to finish. The older child, 15-year old Ethan, didn't appreciate how Jonze molded the story into his own creation and pulled the collar of t-shirt over his head to text friends. A clever trick I'm tempted to try myself when dragged to the latest chick flick by my disapproving girlfriend.

Maybe a movie about a solitary child liberated by his imagination is actually inhibited by older folks who won't allow their imagination the room to take in Jonze's adaption, spoiled by our own childhood memories of experiencing the book. In an ironic twist, it might actually be more of a children's movie.

Okay, fine. It's for the manchild hipster in all of us. Let the wild rumpus whatever, bro.